This disclosure relates generally to image-guided surgery (or surgical navigation), and more particularly, to an instrument guide for use in spinal surgical navigation procedures with surgical navigation systems.
Surgical navigation systems track the precise location of surgical instruments in relation to multidimensional images of a patient's anatomy. Additionally, surgical navigation systems use visualization instruments to provide the surgeon with co-registered views of these surgical instruments with the patient's anatomy.
During surgical procedures, it is beneficial to be able to track the position and trajectory of a surgical instrument, such as a drill bit, into a surgical site on a patient's body in order to ensure that the instrument is directed at the appropriate point in the body. In order to better track the position and trajectory of an instrument entering a surgical site, the instruments are often used with tracked instrument guides. The tracked instrument guides typically include a sensor assembly attached to the handle of the instrument guide. The sensor assembly may communicate with a computer to provide navigation and visualization information of the instrument on a display superimposed on an image of the patient's anatomy in the surgical field of interest.
Instrument guides are used in spinal surgery often for complex cases requiring precision placement of instrumentation, for example in the cervical spine. The approaches are anterior and/or posterior for various indications and procedures. Due to these different approaches, different instrument guides are utilized during certain instrument insertion steps (drill, k-wire, tap, and screw) of a procedure. Instrument guides allow proper positioning of the drill hole and tap to ensure different degrees of convergence patterns of screws at pre-selected angles. Instrument guides also help prevent toggling of different size drills and taps, minimizing the chance of losing cortical or bony tissue that helps later to ensure good bone screw purchase. The instrument guides also work as a safety stop to prevent over-tapping and bi-cortical breech by ending at pre-selected depths.
Therefore, it is desirable to provide navigation and visualization of an instrument guide for instrumentation used in spinal surgery.